An ordinary LEGO minifigure, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary MasterBuilder, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil LEGO tyrant from gluing the universe together.

I need to get this out of the way. THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME!!! SO FUNNY. SO AWESOME. SPACESHIP!!!

Okay, that was the twelve year old me getting some much needed screen time on this website. You can only review depressing relationship films, gritty foreign dramas, and anything that falls out of Lars Von Trier’s ass for so long. The inner child had to come out and I picked a wonderful film for that. The perks of working at a movie theater came to fruition as I picked the latest showtime last night for my friend and I to see this film. We were the only ones in the theater. This had good an bad points. The good points were that we were able to talk a bit without the fear of pissing people off and I was also able to laugh like a lunatic during a movie aimed at kids without seeming like a freak. The bad points were that I would have loved to enjoyed this film with other people because it was a riot and a lot of fun. In the end though I was glad I didn’t have children telling their parents what just occurred on screen for five minutes as they drowned out the audio. This film is a joke a minute type of deal. Hell, I didn’t even catch 100% of the jokes and I was paying full attention. Let’s get into why this film was so awesome.

First off let me describe my childhood as quickly and as entertaining as possible. I was an outdoors kid and when I wasn’t doing things outdoors I was inside playing Sega or playing with my matchbox cars. The second part there is important. I huge theme of “The Lego Movie” is that you should honestly build whatever the fuck you want to build and let you mind be imaginative. I had that. I just didn’t have it with Legos. I had it with matchbox cars. I would create scenarios and situations with over fifty cars as I would crash them, create sound effects, make scenery and roads for them to drive, and of course, mangle the shit out of them with vice grips. What? You never did that? The point is that I had an imaginative mind but focused the energy on little cars. I had Legos, but I would honestly play with them for about twenty minutes before I got bored and got my multiple boxes of cars out. I tried a couple times to build a Millenium Falcon but just couldn’t keep my attention on it to get close to finishing it. That being said, my enjoyment of this film was not out of some nostalgic euphoria, but rather an old fashioned coming out party for my inner child.

This film didn’t need you to be a Lego freak when you were younger. The whole concept of playing with toys as a child was in full focus throughout the whole film, even to the point of attaching mouth sound effects to moving legos ships and machines, JUST LIKE KIDS DO. Multiple situations were fixed with thinking outside the box and attaching unorthodox Lego blocks to parts of the body and other whacked out things kids would do with these things. Look at this great strip from one of my favorite things ever, Calvin and Hobbes…

That was what this movie was. It was a bunch of adult kids getting to let their inner children come to life in a way that never has been seen before. We’ve had Lego movies before. These movies were made with cheap special effects and looked like they were rendered on Windows 95. This is a film shot entirely in CGI but with the delicacy to make sure that every single Lego block looked real. The animation was so real looking that I had a hard time believing I wasn’t looking at a stop motion film using real Legos. It was great. Everything was Lego. The water was Lego. The smoke was Lego. The fire and bullets were Lego. It was a great sight. I remember first seeing posters and trailers for this and thought it was going to be too silly but in reality it was a perfect blend of kid humor and adult humor. This is what makes Pixar fantastic and what is now making Phil Lord and Christopher Miller household names in animated films. They aren’t just for kids. I’m glad they exist.

The cast is also fantastic. Chris Pratt was the perfect person to play the lead Lego man Emmet. Pratt basically plays Emmet as he plays his one of a kind character of “Andy” on Parks and Rec. He is a lovable but ultimately small brained Lego man that is just trying to fit in. Morgan Freeman plays the Gandolph like “Vitruvius” who is a blind prophet trying to stop the evil Mr. Business, played hilariously by Will Ferrell, from taking over the world. Other fantastic roles include Charlie Day as the 1980’s spaceman…SPACESHIP!!!…Alison Brie as Unikitty, and of course, Will Arnett as FUCKING BATMAN. That felt good to say. Batman and Benny the 1980’s Spaceman were the best parts of the film in my eyes. I haven’t laughed that hard in a theater since “This is the End”. The whole cast was a riot.

Lastly there is a good message at the end. I won’t go into spoilers but parents who bring their children hopefully will be leaving with a nice war fuzzy feeling inside and hopefully will spend time building things with their kid. I expected somewhat of a mushy ending and that’s what I got, but it certainly didn’t detract from the film at all. It didn’t add a whole lot but was a nice way to end a film that’s sole purpose was to entertain and make us laugh.

Overall I loved the movie. I want to see it again. I love being twelve years old. The movie was charming, hilarious, and featured one of a kind animation. I’m looking forward to anything those two make i the future and the film lived up to the hype.